That's What I Am

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

Al Waxman, star of King of Kensington (English Canada’s first hit
sitcom) and the American series Cagney and Lacey, left law school in
1959 to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. In the years
since, he has earned a living acting, directing, producing, and teaching
both in Canada and abroad.

In this warts-and-all memoir, Waxman contemplates the Canadian identity
and the emotional pitfalls of being born Jewish. He insists on the need
to remain a student throughout one’s life. He asks some uncomfortable
questions. He recalls the times when he and the CBC did not see eye to
eye, and the crisis of confidence that afflicted him in his mid–50s
when his career went through a dry patch. Then came some work in live
theatre and, in 1997, the role of Willy Loman at the Stratford Festival.
“I want you to know,” his son wrote to him, “how much I admire how
hard you’ve worked for this … You’ve got a lot of guts.” That,
it seems, says it all.